“They were expecting him to say, ‘Can you turn the bass up?’ And he probably never did”: …And Justice For All producer says James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich “hated” that Jason Newsted was a Metallica fan
Though one of the iconic records in the history of thrash and prog metal, Metallica’s landmark 1988 album …And Justice For All has not been without its critics, mostly pointing to the lack of volume on Jason Newsted’s bass lines.
The album’s producer Flemming Rasmussen has put forth several theories as to why the band opted for a reduction in bass volume, including last year when he suggested they did so to “get a reaction out of” Newsted, as he had joined the band as a fan.
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Now, in a new interview with Chile’s Futuro [via Blabbermouth], Rasmussen explains that the lack of bass on the album may have been due to James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich wanting to better hear their guitar and drum parts, respectively.
As the story goes, Rasmussen “had to say no to doing that album [at first]” because he was fully booked, and so the band worked with a series of “hotshot Los Angeles mixers”.
“They started it out with Mike Clink,” he says. “And then three weeks into January, after they’d been in the studio for three weeks, Lars called me up and said, ‘Oh, Flemming, when can you come?’ And I put all my sessions together and postponed some of them. And I went over there [on] 14 February and recorded for five months.
“And by the time I got there, they already got some hotshot Los Angeles mixers, Steve Thompson and Michael Barbiero, to mix it.”
Rasmussen explains how the band listened to what those producers had done, and said: “no, no, no. Where’s my drum sound? Where’s my guitar sound?”
“And actually Lars said, ‘Now take the bass down so you can just hear it,’” he continues. “They did that… And then once [they’d] done that, he said, ‘Take it three dB more down.’ So, it’s Lars and James that decided, and why they did that, I’ve asked them a thousand times. I do not know.”
Flemming Rasmussen also doubles down on his assertion that the band didn’t like that Jason Newsted joined Metallica as a fan.
“I think the reason why they turned the bass down is, like 50 percent of it is because they were on tour with Van Halen, and they flew in and heard the mix,” he goes on. “And I think that’s the point where Lars and James realised that, ‘We don’t have Cliff anymore. It’s not his bass. It’s a totally different sound.’ And I just think they couldn’t relate to that at that point…
The other half is what they hated most about Jason was that he was such a Metallica fan, so every time they asked him anything, he just did it. So I think they took it down just to piss him off, ‘cause they were expecting him to say, ‘Can you turn the bass [up]?’ And he probably never did. That’s why the bass is so low. But I don’t know.”
Despite its lack of bass volume, …And Justice For All has cemented itself as one of the most classic metal albums of all time, hosting tracks like One, Harvester of Sorrow, Blackened and Dyers Eve.
The album’s mix has even prompted some savvy fans, though, to ‘fix’ the audio by ramping up Jason Newsted’s bass parts. Check out this fan-remastered version of Blackened below, and compare it to the original:
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
